


The Simplest Things

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Category: Pushing Daisies, The Office (US)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:36:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night near closing time, Jim comes to The Pie Hole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Simplest Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alissabobissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alissabobissa/gifts).



> (1) This was originally posted many, many moons ago on livejournal. I'm simply archiving it here.
> 
> (2) This is written in a rather straight style with regard to narrative voice and story structure (i.e., no PD narrator or whimsically absurd plot devices and no attempt at Office humor or documentary style), but I'm trying to keep them in their usual characters and voices. Also, there are likely some logistical things about The Pie Hole and about the camera crew that I'm probably fudging on. Just go with it.
> 
> (3) Date this sometime in and about "Corpsicle" (1.09) for Pushing Daisies and right before "Beach Day" (3.21) for The Office.

Olive had already gone home for the night. That was probably for the best. The guy that walked through the door at 10:01 looked like he would resent being cooed over. He wore a messenger bag across his torso and he seemed young and casual. However, he was also wearing a suit, one simple, tasteful, inexpensive, slightly lived-in—and too carefully arranged to suggest anything other than a man who was just as particular about things as Ned and just as unlikely to know exactly why.   
  
Not that Ned couldn't guess, about himself and about this guy. When Chuck came back into his life, she made him aware of all his irrational knee-jerk reactions and highly-rational self-protective behavior. She seemed to have made it her job to quietly but diligently strip those things away, where it was necessary. Of course, he was also aware that her presence was founding in him more and different reactions, both rational and irrational, but he considered it a more than acceptable trade off.  
  
Or it was most of the time. Right now, she wasn't talking to him. He took in a deep breath and held it, then he sighed it out slowly. He reminded himself, for the tenth time in the last hour, that even if she wouldn’t be sleeping in the bed beside his, at least he knew where she was now. It would just take time. He'd waited years, hadn't he? He could wait a little longer. He could spend another evening not talking to her, giving her space. He could, instead, spend the evening talking to this guy.  
  
The only thing was, he found himself wondering why on earth he should want to. Ned normally wasn't all that fond of dealing with people, let alone strangers, so he might easily have sent the man away and instead gone home alone to his quiet apartment. It was just that Ned felt somehow kin to him, even if he was puzzled as to how. The guy seemed so unlike him: genuinely mirthful, probably the type of person that everyone wanted to be around. His manner was easy, charmingly awkward. Chuck would like him, he thought with an inward pang he tried his best to ignore.   
  
As the man had taken off his coat and sat down on the stool, Ned had known exactly what kind of pie to bring him: apple. But as he came back out front now, before he sat the plate down in front of him, he paused.  
  
He suddenly noticed—how in the world hadn't he before?—that the guy wasn't all that happy. He actually seemed just as miserable as Ned, only he was trying much harder not to show it. Looking at his now hangdog expression and watery blue eyes, a thought struck Ned from nowhere.  
  
"I don't usually do this," Ned said, "but I've got some sliced cheddar that I put on my sandwich at lunch. I could…" He nodded at the slice of pie.  
  
The man's face crinkled up in a sudden smile. "Yeah? That would be great. If it's no trouble."  
  
"No," Ned said. Really, it wasn't. Just weird. Ned felt a little like cheddar on an apple pie was sacrilegious even though he knew that to others it was sacrosanct. Normally, he wouldn't have even thought to do it, but for this guy, he just knew. Still, he added, "But I'll admit I don't understand the cheese on pie thing."  
  
The guy gave him a funny smile. "You run a pie…restaurant? Diner? Café?"  
  
"Diner."  
  
"Okay. You run a pie diner, and you don't like cheese on apple pie?"  
  
"Actually, I don't eat pie much."  
  
The guy smiled. "I guess I can understand that."  
  
No, he really couldn't, but it wasn't as though Ned could explain it.  _Actually, I don't eat my own pies because the fruit turns rotten as soon as I touch it. It's complicated. You see, I'm a freak of nature…_  Sometimes Ned hated how he felt so separated from other people; there were whole worlds of things he couldn't say to anyone but Chuck and Emerson. It made him rather unconsciously hesitant to talk to anybody but the two of them. Even Olive. It made Chuck's current need for space particularly painful.  
  
As the man's gaze dropped to the counter again, an almost awkward but mostly comfortable silence began to stretch between them. It was Ned's habit to let such things go on, but he had the sense that it wouldn’t be healthy for either of them in this case, so he forced himself out of his own thoughts and launched himself toward the kitchen. There were things he could talk about without having to skirt around discussing his "gift." If nothing else, there was pie.   
  
"It might take a few minutes," he said across the dividing counter. "I'll have to put it in the oven to melt the cheese."  
  
"You can just nuke it in the microwave if you want," the guy called out. "I'm not picky."  
  
Ned paused, then he came back to the window with a sheepish smile. "I don't have a microwave."  
  
The guy made a funny little grimace. "Wow."  
  
"Sorry."  
  
"No, it's fine," he said, shaking his head. "Just weird. But not bad or anything." He rolled his eyes at himself. "What I mean: I'm in no hurry. Unless you are."  
  
"No, no. I'm definitely not."  
  
He shuffled back through the kitchen and fired up the old coffee maker, the one that didn't spit out varieties of fancy espresso, on his way turning the dial on the oven to broil. After he got the pie set up and in the oven, he came back out front to find the guy staring into the napkin dispenser, looking as forlorn as Ned felt.  
  
"I'm Ned, by the way," he said nervously, startling the man a bit, but he recovered quickly and reached his hand over the counter to shake.   
  
"Jim. It was really nice of you to stay open for me."  
  
"I kind of had to," he replied. Jim made a quizzical face. "I've had a really…crappy day, and I was kind of hoping for a little distraction from it." Jim smiled sardonically and began to shake his head, but Ned held up a hand. "No, I get it. I'm the distraction. Or…we're distracting each other or…something. That's probably better anyway."  
  
Jim sighed. "Is it that obvious?"  
  
"Well, isn't it obvious with me?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"So I know better than to ask. I hate it when people try to needle things out of me. You don't have to talk about it unless you want to." He paused, then he added, "Of course, that's obviously a little bit of a lie because I am kind of curious to know one thing, for my own sanity: is it about a woman?"  
  
"Oh, yeah," Jim said, and saying the words seemed to release some invisible line holding the tension in his face, his hands. All of a sudden, Ned felt like he could see into Jim's head, or maybe his heart, when he looked into his eyes. Jim gave him a weak, covering sort of smile and added, "Two, actually. The one I should want to be with—"  
  
"And the one you actually do even though you can't."  
  
He smiled bitterly. "Yeah."  
  
Ned gave him a sober nod, but he found that he didn't know what to say in response. As much as he'd wanted to know if they were having similar troubles, he didn't actually want to think about them.   
  
As the silence crept in on them again, Ned was thankfully summoned back to the kitchen by the gurgling sound of the coffee pot. The cheese was finally melting over Jim's pie, and as Ned took it out, frowning at it a bit, he had the sudden and inexplicable urge to have a slice of pie himself. He racked his brain to see if he'd made anything that day with fresh fruit rather than the reanimated kind, but that was pretty rare. He couldn't think of a single safe thing to let touch his tongue. Unless, of course, Chuck had made anything while he was out. She could, of course, use his re-ripe fruit, and she sometimes did, but when she made a pie for herself, she delighted in going to the market downtown to pick out her very own…  
  
Peaches. God, yes. He remembered the mysterious but heartening appearance of the peach pie that afternoon. He suddenly really, really needed a slice. He also really, really needed four hands if he was going to carry the small army of cups and plates and silverware back out to the counter.   
  
He made a hell of a lot of noise trying, prompting Jim to call out, "Need any help back there?"   
  
"Umm…"  
  
Jim was striding through the door before he could protest. He'd taken off his coat and rolled his sleeves up and loosened his tie. Funny, Ned thought, but as much as the suit…suited him, he also looked perfectly at home slightly disheveled. It matched his strategically rumpled hair.  
  
As Ned slid Jim's pie plate and coffee cup over to him, he began to tell him about the kitchen and the ins and outs of the pie business. It was something he didn't have much occasion to talk about, so it was strange to do so, but he found himself oddly proud of this life he’d made for himself. By the time he'd come to a breathing space in his chattering, he looked up to find that Jim's pie was half gone and so was his own coffee. There didn’t seem any real reason for them to move, so they simply remained there, standing on opposite sides of his pie-making counter.  
  
"So," Ned said, "am I crazy, or did I see a camera crew following you up to the door?"  
  
"Oh." Jim laughed. "Yeah. They're with me all the time, so I kind of don't even notice anymore. I mean, I notice, but it's like it's normal now."  
  
"Still, it seems…weird."  
  
"It is, I guess. But interesting. They're probably still out there." He turned and waved, and Ned thought he saw a flash of light at the front window. "Sometimes, I just have to get a break from them."  
  
As Ned finally dug into his piece of Chuck's peach pie, Jim told him a story about the cameras and about an office full of apparently half-crazy people. It made him very glad he had his own business and his very insular life, but it also made him envious in a way he couldn't make sense of. The story absorbed him so much he almost forgot how much he missed Chuck—except when he kept thinking how funny she would find it all. The simplest things made her smile. He loved that about her.  
  
*  
  
In the end, Jim had a second piece of pie. He let Ned talk him into something daring: strawberry rhubarb. It was actually pretty fantastic. The man really did have a gift for baking. Jim thought that was strange, seeing as how he was such a mediocre cook himself. Then he thought that it was strange that he should be assuming they would have anything in common. They were very different people, with different lives, ways of talking, even likes and dislikes about pie.   
  
Maybe it was just that he felt like he already knew how to talk to him. Of course he did, he realized. Ned was just as reserved and hard to read as Pam could be—but also just as easy to make laugh, if you knew (instinctively, for him, somehow) how to push just the right things and back off on the others. That was the problem, he realized. Deal with Pam long enough and you want to be as tentative as she is. Like walking up to a bird without startling it; careful but purposeful steps.   
  
Ned did look a little like a bird, he supposed., all long legs and arms tucked up against his body. He was a good listener, though. Almost like a bartender, but better. A bartender with pie.   
  
"You're like a bartender," he said. "Only with pie."  
  
Ned shook his head. "I don't know."  
  
"You've been listening to me rattle on for like…" He checked his watch. "Man, for like half an hour."  
  
"But I haven’t given you a single bit of advice."  
  
"You don’t go to bars much, do you?"  
  
Ned smiled sheepishly. “No.”  
  
“You’re actually the best kind of bartender. With pie.”  
  
Ned smiled. "And you didn't want advice anyway. You've been very carefully not talking about anything…advisable."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Ned opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment they were startled by a rattling from the front. The doors, Jim thought. Maybe the crew. Still, it set off his adrenaline, and it seemed to have unsettled Ned, too, if he could judge by the man's pinched-up expression.  
  
Rather than confront the danger, they simply stood very still in the kitchen and waited, especially as they clearly heard the sound of the front doors being unlocked and opened.  
  
Then a voice rang out, "That you, Ned?"  
  
Ned sighed and his whole body relaxed as he grimaced. "Yes, Olive."  
  
"How do I know it's you?"  
  
"Doesn't it sound like me?"  
  
"Maybe you're throwing your voice."  
  
Jim made a confused face at that, and he was startled by the realization that he was looking for a camera when he did.   
  
Ned replied, "That wouldn't make someone sound different. It would just make them sound like they were in the kitchen when they were actually right behind you."  
  
She gasped aloud, and Jim was sure she probably spun around, too.   
  
Ned added, "Or something."  
  
"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" she called out, and they heard the sound of her shoes coming toward them again.   
  
"No. Sorry."  
  
A short blonde woman in a garish green dress appeared in the doorway then, ushering a less-than-fierce-looking dog ahead of her. As she took in Ned's profile, leaned up against the counter, arms crossed, she smiled and let the dog leash go slack. The dog trotted up to Ned and waited at his feet.   
  
Olive, on the other hand, came up to Jim, waiting right in front of him although she addressed her words to Ned. "What are you doing and who is this?" She frowned skeptically.  
  
Ned replied, "Standing, oddly enough, in the kitchen of the diner I own. This is Jim. What are  _you_  doing here? I thought you went home."  
  
Olive's eyes were literally traveling up and down Jim's body in a way that was more comical than unpleasant.   
  
"I was walking Digby and I saw the light on. I was afraid there was an intruder."  
  
"You were going to confront an intruder on your own?"  
  
She turned her head this time. "It seemed like a better plan a few minutes ago."  
  
"Well," Ned said, suddenly pushing himself off the counter. "There's no intruder. Just a late customer. I'm—we're—fine. You can go home."  
  
Olive smiled up at Jim for a long moment, squinting her eyes at him, but as Ned stepped forward and took hold of the dog's leash, suddenly Olive's attention was squarely on him.  
  
Squarely. Entirely. Absolutely. Stars in her eyes, cartoon hearts leaping out of her barely-covered chest, hanging on his every mumble. It was remarkable.   
  
"Okay, okay," she said, trying to sound annoyed but not trying at all to keep him from nudging her toward the kitchen doorway if only because he had his hands on her shoulders. "You could at least thank a girl for checking up on you. And nearly having the pee scared out of her."  
  
"Thank you, Olive."  
  
"Now, see. That wasn't so hard."  
  
"See you in the morning?" Ned said, handing the leash back.  
  
"Bright and early," she replied, batting her eyelashes at him. "C'mon, Digby. Let's leave the boys to their pow-wow."  
  
It wasn't until she was out the door that Jim realized she'd never even introduced herself to him, and she certainly hadn't said goodbye.   
  
"So," Jim said as Ned retrieved the coffee pot and poured himself another cup. Jim held his out, too. "That was  _should_?"  
  
"Huh?" Ned said.  
  
"As opposed to  _do_. Because, man, if you somehow don't know it, I'm here to tell you: that woman is all about you."  
  
Ned gave him a sheepish smile, then he nodded resolutely. "She's great. Olive's great. Good friend. Excellent waitress."  
  
Jim nodded. "Waitress. Right. Should. What about…?"  
  
"My  _do_?" He smiled, widely at first but his expression quickly clouded over. "I have my  _do_. That sounds weird, doesn't it?"  
  
"Yeah, it kind of does. My fault. But, I mean, you have her?" Ned nodded. "Then why're you so…?"  
  
"She's mad at me."  
  
"Your fault?"  
  
"Yes…and no."  
  
"There's nothing you can do, is there?"  
  
He shook his head. "Wait."  
  
"Sucks."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Jim watched Ned's eyes light on the rack of pies behind him. He seemed to withdraw into himself, but even though there was an expression of barely-concealed misery on his face, he seemed strangely content anyway.  
  
"Can I ask you something?" Jim said. He was looking not at Ned but that plate. He ran his finger through the remnants of pie there and licked it clean.   
  
"There's a reason I don't give advice."  
  
"Noted," Jim said with a soft chuckle. "How did you choose?"  
  
"Choose?"  
  
"Between  _should_  and  _do_?"  
  
Ned gave a pained smile. Then he shrugged. "There was no choice."  
  
Jim let that sink in for a moment, then he said, "You don't like Olive, then?"  
  
"That way? No."  
  
Jim paused, then he said, "It's a lot harder when you genuinely like Olive."   
  
Ned gave him a weak smile. Jim thought that Ned should count himself profoundly lucky that his  _do_  wanted him in return. His own choice had been taken out of his hands, but somehow that still didn’t make the choosing any easier. But that was nothing he could explain to Ned.   
  
No, he thought. That was probably just another one of those things he couldn't say to the camera.  
  
"So, this thing about the cameras," Jim said abruptly, and he wasn’t even sure what he was about to say, but he couldn’t stop himself. It felt right, or at least necessary. "I'm used to having them over my shoulder all the time, at least at work. Sometimes, I even seek them out. I've kind of gotten used to…talking about myself. To the cameras."  
  
"I can't imagine."  
  
"That's what I used to say. But now, I’m not sure if I know how to function without them. That’s what I’ve been thinking about while I’ve been standing here talking to you." Ned didn't say anything, simply stared into his cup, and Jim felt compelled to fill up the silence: "I lie."  
  
"About?"  
  
"Everything. I mean, nothing I’ve told you was a lie—not, like, factually speaking. But…I leave a lot of things out. I pretend that things are better than they are. I act like I'm happy sometimes when I'm not, so much that I think I do it now when the cameras aren't on me. So, yeah, that's how I deal with this weird things with the cameras. I lie."  
  
Ned regarded him oddly for a moment, then he made his funny little face, almost like a smile. Cautiously—maybe slyly—he said, "Especially about Pam?"  
  
Jim's mouth dropped open, and he just sighed out a quick breath of air and smiled, bewildered.  
  
"I'm sorry," Ned said nervously. "I'm not trying to be nosy. Really. You can tell me to mind my own—"  
  
"No," Jim said, recovering his voice again. "It's…okay. I just… I don't... How could you know? I didn't really say that much about her."  
  
"No, you didn't say a lot about her, but I noticed that you were maybe a little too emphatic about how there was nothing to say.” He slowly grinned. “And you smile a lot when you talk about her."  
  
Jim felt a smile come to his face then, but it dissolved as quickly as one of Ned’s had seemed to all night into something melancholy. Ned was looking at him expectantly, now. But if his face reflected Jim's back to him, all his barely-concealed hurt, it wasn't at all like the reflection in a camera lens, and Jim was profoundly grateful for that.   
  
So he said, "You wanna hear the story? The unedited version?"  
  
Ned nodded, then he inclined his head in the direction of the kitchen doorway. Jim scooped up the cups and watched as Ned quickly set another pot of coffee brewing, and then they drifted back out of the kitchen and settled into a booth at the windows. There was no sign of the camera crew.  
  
"My girl, by the way, is Chuck," Ned said, settling in.  
  
"Chuck?"  
  
"It's really- a nickname. She's had it since she was a kid. I'll tell you about her, if you want. But I'd kind of rather hear more about Pam."  
  
For a moment, Jim couldn't think of how to start. Then he simply told him the same thing he told anybody about her—his coworkers, his friends, his mother, himself:   
  
"She's probably my best friend."  
  
He used to think it was a cop-out, a way of saying what he wanted to without actually saying it or a lie he told himself so he wouldn't think about what he couldn't have. But sitting across from this piemaker, he decided it was always the most important part of the truth.  
  
What was even closer to the truth, at least as things stood now, hurt enormously to admit: "Or she was."   
  
"And that's the problem?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"You can get it back," Ned said. "I lost Chuck for years. Then she came back to me. She's always been my best friend, even when she wasn't with me."   
  
Ned sounded so sure, but if Jim knew anything about him, it was that the more sure he sounded, the less sure he actually was.   
  
So he replied, "Well, then, whatever it is you've done, she'll forgive you, won't she?"  
  
"Yeah," Ned said, trying to suppress a smile. "I think so."  
  
Jim told him the whole story, then, and it might've been the first time in a long time he was honest about it, even with himself. He couldn't say whether he felt any better by the time he was done, but those things all needed saying. Some of them, he knew, to Pam.  
  
But maybe just as important to tell her were the simplest things, what happened to him day after day to make him laugh or smile or marvel, things he'd been wanting to tell her for months, as they happened. He knew he'd lost a great many of them to time, circumstance, and memory. But if he could find a way to get close to her again, he told himself that he would remember as many as he could. At the very least, he wouldn't forget this pie diner. Maybe he would even bring her here someday. He had a feeling she’d be as charmed by the place and its owner as he was.


End file.
